The Renewable Energy Component of the Indo-German Energy Programme (IGEN-RE) is a bilateral cooperation project with the Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) carried out by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Launched in 2010, the project aims to promote renewable energy in rural areas. For more information please visit our website: www.igen-re.in.

Monday, 20 January 2014

Lessons from the Indian National Programme for Improved Cookstoves (NPIC)

Data from the World Health Organisation suggests that indoor air pollution (IAP) causes around 480,000 premature deaths
annually in India (WHO 2009). Improved Cookstoves can help the 150 million
households in India that are still using biomass like wood, dung and straw for
cooking, to reduce hazardous levels of indoor air pollution. Although multiple
models of improved cookstoves are available in India, stove adoption has so far
been low. How can we change this situation and build a functioning market for
improves stoves? In fact, there have been several efforts in the past to bring
improved cookstoves into Indian kitchens, but most of them did not result in any
long-term impacts. What can we learn from these past experiences to make future
cookstove programme more effective? The Indo-German Energy Programme has analysed studies on the largest
cookstove intervention India has seen so far – the National Programme on
Improved Cookstoves (NPIC) – to extract the most crucial lessons learned.

Smoke produced while cooking emerges from a hut in Laxmikantapur, West Bengal

The NPIC was implemented by the Indian Ministry
of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) between 1983 and 2002 to reduce biomass
consumption through the dissemination of improved biomass cookstoves. On the
one hand it succeeded in “initially distributing tens of millions [around 35
million] of stoves and so achieved a scale well beyond the nascent commercial
[cookstove] operations” (Shrimali 2011) that are currently underway. On the
other hand, the programme had a limited long-term impact: In 2013 only around
0.3% of the Indian populationwas using an
improved cookstove (GACC 2013).
The dissemination of improved cookstoves was driven by subsidies and national/regional
targets. 50 – 75% of the stove price was met by a direct cash subsidy. The
detailed analysis of NPIC revealed the flowing five lessons: